Friday is your indicator that it’s time to talk about new products. As always, we have some cool new stuff for you.

OK, you got me, I wasn’t really in the jungles of South America. But we did have the GTE knobs custom made. And they DO go to eleven, so there’s that. Also, if you’re looking below for the Cubelets, we mentioned them last week and you can find them all here.

I’m not saying all other knobs are inferior, but if you get any other knob, you’re going to be doing a disservice to your project. Most knobs only give you a range of 10 units, but the GTE knobs go up to eleven, giving you one more. Get that extra push over the cliff, get the GTE knob. You deserve it.

It seems like everything needs to be ‘connected’ and ‘smart’ these days, why not your watch? The MetaWatch connects to your phone via Bluetooth and let’s you keep it in your pants (your phone). You can check your emails, calendar events, tweets, and all that other stuff the kids are into these days. It’s also open-source, so you can hack it to do whatever you want. They come in black and white, and we have a cool teardown and tutorial to give you a better idea of what they can do.

The CEE (Control Experiment Explore) by Nonolith Labs is an open source analog multitool that lets you measure and control voltage and current. With the CEE you will have a two channel, two-quadrant, three-digit source measure unit in the palm of your hand. Simply plug the CEE into your computer via Mini-B USB, run the multitool’s user interface (Pixelpulse), and start controlling and exploring the voltage and current of whatever is connected, it’s that simple!

We wanted a simple webcam to use with the pcDuino, so we got this. It works well with Linux, is small, and simple. Its resolution is 1024x768, which works well for object detection and such. You can of course also use it as a webcam.

Let’s heat things up a bit. No, seriously. We have a new heating panel this week. It operates up to 12V and can get up to 500 degrees F (or 2.6*102 C for all my metric peeps). These cost a bit more than our other heating pads, but they get a LOT hotter and don’t warp under high heat.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand, I’m done. That’s all we have for this week. But, as I say every week, we have even more new products next week, so check back. Thanks for reading and see you then!

Every Friday New Product Post is like another April Fools: a combination of hilarious products with funny in-depth demos, sprinkled with a bit ‘o witty screenplay. Kudos!
I wonder how many people are actually going to use that webcam for its intended purpose….Also, that’s pretty high res for a camera of that style.

Electronics control knobs (volume, intensity, etc) tend to start at 1, or a set minimum because the amplifier setup normally has a minimum beneath which the function is essentially unusable, or difficult to achieve with stability. So, they start at ‘1’ with the next step down from that being ‘Off.’ Also, variable feedback topologies tend to start at unity gain and just go up from there. A logical alternate numbering scheme would be logarithmic scale, with ‘0’ being unity gain, attenuation being negative numbers, and amplification being positive numbers, which you see in some applications. So fret not, the ‘goes to 11’ knob is replacing a ‘1 to 10’ knob anyway. Personally, even without a numeric correlation between the dial and a real number characterizing the circuit’s output, I like to have that ‘extra ten percent’ so I can design a circuit that will marginally overdrive, if needed, with the 11 reminding you that it’s operating outside of normal bounds. It would be nice to have a (defeatable) stop at 10, to avoid accidental overload. :-)

On your next trip, how about looking for non-marked knobs (no line, or any other position indicator) that fit COM-10982 (doesn’t need to be clear; preferably aluminum)? I’ve looked online for hours, and have only found ONE style of knob that isn’t marked (for $4 each).

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